This month, New York federal district court Judge Laura Taylor Swain gave what is expected to be her final substantive ruling on the dispute between Sketchworks Industrial Strength Comedy Inc. and the copyright owners of the musical Grease, which Sketchworks’ musical Vape parodies. In her ruling, Judge Swain held that...
Doc10, Chicago’s only all-documentary film festival, announced its first-ever awards program, which honored documentary filmmakers. Among this year’s winners is RPJ Client Jessica Devaney, who was presented with the Vanguard Award, created to honor innovative documentary filmmakers, for her production of 17 shorts and features, including Pray Away. The award...
At the upcoming 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, three of RPJ’s clients will premiere documentary feature films as part of the Festival’s Spotlight Documentary, Viewpoints and Documentary Competition selections. Tickets are available for purchase here. Naked Gardens, directed by Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan and produced by Tabs Breese, follows the...
On May 5, Variety featured Milisuthando Bongela's self-titled documentary on Black middle-class women in post-apartheid South Africa, as part of the 2022 Hot Docs Forum. The film, for which RPJ provides production legal services, is produced by Marion Isaacs for The Good Black Project, in co-production with Sonia Barrera and...
Talking about the Metaverse is like having a discussion about what “the internet” is in the 1970s or what “the cloud” is in the early 2000s. So what exactly is the Metaverse and what is all the hype about? Simply put, the Metaverse is a new iteration of the internet...
The FCC won’t let me be or let me be me so let me see…they wouldn’t let Will use profanity, but it felt so empty on live TV. Watching TV with people who make TV (or at least know how the sausage is made, in my case) is either a...
RPJ Client Minnow Films Ltd. is debuting Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King tomorrow, March 30th, on Netflix. The crime documentary follows the story of investors-turned-sleuths as they attempt to uncover the mystery behind the suspicious death of multimillionaire Gerry Cotten, and the missing $250 million they...
My Cousin Vinny, the 1992 courtroom drama/comedy starring Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci turned 30 this week. The film is not only a good drama and fantastic comedy, but served as a driving force in pushing my interest in becoming a lawyer and specifically, a litigator. While lawyering was not...
Move over Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. After the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in 2014, the International Skating Union changed its rules in figure skating competitions to allow figure skaters to skate to music with lyrics to appeal to younger audiences who tune in to watch the Olympics (goodbye Swan Lake!). Now...
Missing in Brooks County, the influential feature documentary that follows two families as they search for missing children in Brooks County, Texas, and puts a human face on the fatal crossings by undocumented Mexican immigrants that has created the “largest cemetery” in the United States, will be premiering on PBS’s...